Von Zedletz building at Victoria University of Wellington, where my office is on the level 4
Below is my self-introduction for the newsletter for the staffs and PhD students of the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies of Victoria University of Wellington. I will formally start my PhD study on 2nd of March 2009. (Japanese translation: 以下はウェリントン・ビクトリア大学、言語学・応用言語研究学科のスタッフおよび博士課程生向けのニューズレターに書いた私の自己紹介です。2009年3月2日に正式に博士課程生になります。)
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Hello, everyone. My name is Tatsuhiko Matsushita. I have not had an English nick name before, but I am now getting used to be called Tatsu. If you feel it is not easy to remember or pronounce, you can also remember it as ‘Tattoo’ (but not ‘Taboo’), while you have an image of a big tattoo on my back. It is a so-called key word method, isn’t it? But I do not have a tattoo on my body actually as I think it is a sort of ‘taboo’ in my home country Japan, for a lot of ‘yakuza’ the Japanese gangs have one on their body.
I am interested in the development of Japanese vocabulary, particularly in regard to Chinese learners in comparison with non-Chinese learners and will probably work on Japanese vocabulary testing. I have to write a thesis on Japanese and Chinese in English. Please help me when you see my brain looks like exploding with the three languages.
I used to work for J. F. Oberlin (or Obirin) university in Tokyo for more than 14 years as coordinator of Japanese language programme for international students during the most of the period. It was an interesting and challenging job, but I felt more and more desire for research since spending my sabbatical in Beijing and Sydney for half a year respectively in 2001 and 2002-2003 with a great envy of PhD students concentrating on their research there. Then I found myself studying at VUW. I am afraid I might be having a mid-life crisis, but I have been enjoying being a student so far. If you need some help with Japanese or if there is anything I can do, please feel free to ask me at VZ410.
